Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:00]
Holly Fry
You're listening to an iHeart podcast. Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
- [00:17]
Tracy V. Wilson
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
- [00:20]
Holly Fry
And I'm Holly Fry.
- [00:22]
Tracy V. Wilson
On April 22nd of 2025, that is this year, the US Department of Health and Human Services had a press conference about a plan to phase eight synthetic food dyes out of the US food supply by the end of 2026. Now that that's like a whole can of worms. It's not really what this episode is about. We're not really going to get into it, but at this press conference for this announcement, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Gave a speech in in which he described a long list of diseases and conditions as injuries. And he claimed he had never heard of them when he was a kid. Now, RFK Jr. Was born in 1954, so he was kind of implying that these diseases weren't really around in the 50s and the 60s and that they are in fact injuries caused by things like synthetic food dyes. The diseases and conditions that he named in this speech included narcolepsy, which was first described in writing in 1621. We did a two part episode on narcolepsy in 2015. Also included was what he called juvenile diabetes, which is now called type 1 diabetes. That was of course a big part of our two parter on the discovery of insulin, which came out in 2020. Diabetes was first described in the Ebers Papyrus, which dates back to about 1500 BCE. So almost 3500 years before R K Jr was born. If it's not obvious, I got a bee in my bonnet about this speech. None of these diseases from the speech are new. And while the prevalence of some of them does seem to be increasing in a lot of cases, that's a global trend, not something unique to the United States and its food supply. And we don't necessarily know the reasons behind this particular any particular increase. Some of it though is is definitely more about expanded definitions and better testing diagnosis and treatment than we had half a century ago, though also some of it is just about people living longer and surviving things that would have killed them in earlier eras. So I thought about doing something called Six Impossible Episodes Diseases RFK Jr says he has never heard of. But some of the things he listed off weren't really diseases. They were more like generic descriptions or whole categories. And also that seemed like too much for one episode. So I narrowed this down to three autoimmune diseases that he mentioned in this speech, they are rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Crohn's disease. This is not a thorough history of all of them. This is really about when and where these diseases were first recognized and described.
- [03:21]
Holly Fry
So all three of these diseases have some things in common, and rather than repeating those commonalities every time, we're going to start with some of them. So as Tracy just said, they are all autoimmune diseases, meaning they all involve the body's immune system attacking healthy tissue. And there is no one definitive, exact known cause for any of them. It's likely a combination of genetic and environmental factors, such as exposure to things like pollution or tobacco smoke, as well as possibly hormones. All three of these diseases are more prevalent in women, in some cases much more prevalent in women. It is also possible that viral infections may be involved in triggering all of these illnesses or triggering flare ups of the illnesses after they've developed.
- [04:08]
Tracy V. Wilson
In terms of that genetic element, there is no single gene or gene mutation that conclusively causes any of these. Rheumatoid arthritis, for example, has at least 46 different genes that are known to contribute to it in some way. These diseases all tend to run in families, but having an immediate family member with one of them means that a person is more likely to develop it, not that they are guaranteed to develop it.
- [04:38]
Holly Fry
If one identical twin has one of these diseases, the other twin is more likely to have it as well. But the rate of both identical twins having the disease isn't anywhere close to 100%. Studies vary somewhat, but generally speaking, if one identical twin has rheumatoid arthritis, the other twin develops it only about 15% of the time. With Crohn's disease, that number is 30%, and it's less than 50% with lupus. Identical twins have the same DNA, and if they grew up in the same household, they would likely have very similar, if not identical, environmental factors affecting their health. So the fact that that rate is nowhere near 100% suggests that it's more complicated and that there are other factors going on or that some elements are just random.
- [05:28]
Tracy V. Wilson
Social determinants of health probably play a part in these diseases as well. Those are non medical factors like a person's income, wealth, education, and where and how they grew up. These social determinants may be connected to some of the racial disparities that do exist for some of these diseases. For example, rheumatoid arthritis is most prevalent in white women, but in the United States, Black, Hispanic and Latina, indigenous, Alaska Native, Asian, American and Pacific Islander women are all disproportionately more likely to develop lupus. There's some suggestion that social determinants are connected to these disparities. Similarly, Crohn's disease is less prevalent in the tropics, which has led to a hypothesis that it might be connected to exposure to sunlight or to a person's vitamin D levels.
- [06:25]
Holly Fry
There is also no one single diagnostic test for any of these. They all require some combination of family history, physical exams, lab work, and imaging or biopsies. So while the diseases themselves are not new, some of the tools used to detect them are. That also means getting a diagnosis can be time and labor intensive. And in the US where we don't have universal health care, that means it's also often very expensive. Each of these can also be mistaken for other similar diseases, both in living people and in the archaeological record. So all of this together means that it can be really, really tricky to tell when humans first started experiencing these diseases, but in all of them, it was definitely before the 20th century.
- [07:16]
Tracy V. Wilson
Of these three diseases, Crohn's disease was the one that was named and thoroughly described the most. So we will start there. This is an inflammatory bowel disease that causes symptoms like abdominal cramps, pain and diarrhea, which can be bloody. These can happen as flare ups, with periods of feeling relatively well in between those flare ups. As this condition progresses, it can cause thickening in some of the tissues of the digestive tract, as well as perforations or fistulas in the intestinal tissue. It commonly affects the ileum, which is the last part of the small intestine.
- [07:58]
Holly Fry
The severity of Crohn's disease can vary from person to person, and it can also vary over time and eventually cause complications in other systems of the body. Treatments include diet and lifestyle modifications, anti inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids, immune system suppressors, monoclonal antibodies, and antibiotics. If infections develop, damage to the intestine can lead to a need for surgery, and sometimes more than one surgery.
- [08:27]
Tracy V. Wilson
Crohn's disease is not caused by stress or diet, but both of those things can affect a person's symptoms, including contributing to flare ups. Since the disease can affect a person's ability to absorb nutrients, some people have to carefully manage what they eat, and for some people, that just becomes kind of exhausting over time. This disease can also be really life altering. The symptoms that it can cause can be incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassing. And sometimes people have a hard time leaving the house to do things they enjoy or to travel during a flare because they might not have access to a bathroom when they need it. A lot of people with Crohn's disease and with the other autoimmune diseases that we're talking about today also talk about how hard it can be socially as their friends and family members just assume that they're flaky or that they don't care when they have to turn down invitations or cancel their plans last minute. They also talk about things like bosses, assuming that they are lazy or unreliable, rather than understanding the realities of their medical condition.
- [09:36]
Holly Fry
It's really tricky to know when people first started experiencing Crohn's disease, because there are a lot of different diseases and conditions that can cause chronic diarrhe and abdominal pain. Greek physician Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who lived in the first century ce, described a young man who was having recurring bouts of diarrhea and abdominal distress. But we don't have a way to know whether this was Crohn's disease specifically. Similarly, Saxon King Alfred the Great, who lived in the 9th century, had recurring debilitating abdominal pain and diarrhea, but we don't know the exact cause.
- [10:13]
Tracy V. Wilson
King Louis XIII of France died in 1643 at the age of 42 after experiencing recurring chronic diarrhea and other abdominal issues for years. An autopsy was conducted after his death and that showed that he had perforations in his small intestine which can be indicative of Crohn's. But he also had signs of tuberculosis which can lead to some similar abdominal issues as as well.
- [10:41]
Holly Fry
Well, in 1761, Italian anatomist Giovanni Battista Morgani wrote about a 20 year old man who had died. Morgani conducted an autopsy and found lesions in the man's large and small intestines, including perforations and ulcerations, which again could have been from Crohn's disease. A century later, Albert von Sachsen Coburg, Prince Consort of Queen Victoria, died at the age of 42 of what was described at the time as typhoid fever. But modern researchers examining his medical records have found evidence that he had some kind of chronic intestinal disease that was like Crohn's.
- [11:20]
Tracy V. Wilson
In 1875, Samuel Wilkes and Walter Moxon published a case report in which they described a young woman who had died after experiencing severe bloody diarrhea. They performed an autopsy and they found that she had ulcerations and inflammations throughout her colon. This is often cited as the first very clear clinical description of ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease are very similar, and they are generally differentiated by exactly where in the digestive system the damage is occurring.
- [11:58]
Holly Fry
In 1932, Burl Krohn, Leon Ginsberg, and Gordon D. Oppenheimer published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical association called regional ileitis a pathological and clinical entity. They reported on 14 patients who had what they called regional ileitis. All 14 had abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever, and weight loss, and they had been treated with surgery. They all had evidence of fistula formation, and they were all emaciated and anemic. At least half of them had previously had their appendix removed, possibly because doctors had mistaken their symptoms for appendicitis. The paper included radiological images and ruled out abdominal tuberculosis as the cause of these issues.
- [12:47]
Tracy V. Wilson
These authors presented regional ileitis as a new disease, but there had been several other papers published in the first decades of the 20th century that had also reported very similar patterns of intestinal inflammation, perforations, and fistula formation. Even so, though this is considered a landmark paper, and even though the authors had used the name regional ileitis, soon people were calling it Crohn's disease, after author Beryl Crohn. While Crohn was listed first among this paper's authors, that was just because their names were alphabetical. On the paper, he actually preferred the name regional ileitis.
- [13:30]
Holly Fry
So Crohn's disease got its name in 1932, but it's very likely that it existed long before that. Its prevalence does seem to be increasing worldwide, not just in the United States, but we really do not know exactly why.
- [13:45]
Tracy V. Wilson
We will talk about rheumatoid arthritis after we take a quick sponsor break. All three of the diseases that we're talking about today are infinite inflammatory autoimmune diseases. In rheumatoid arthritis, or ra, the inflammation is in the synovial membranes that line the joints. This causes joint pain, swelling, and loss of function. Other symptoms can include fatigue, fever, and weight loss. This inflammatory process damages the joints over time, and it can also damage other body systems. Rheumatoid arthritis is the most common chronic inflammatory joint disease in the world, and in the United States, it's the third most common type of arthritis after osteoarthritis and gout. Juvenile RA also affects children and can start in infancy.
- [14:47]
Holly Fry
As with Crohn's disease, the prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis does seem to be increasing again globally, not just in the U.S. although rates of RA vary dramatically from one part of the world to another, some of this apparent increase is because of changing definitions though. The American College of Rheumatology and the European alliance of Associations for Rheumatology issued revised definitions for RA in 2010 and these new definitions focus on symptoms that are present at the earliest stages of the disease, which was not the case before.
- [15:21]
Tracy V. Wilson
A range of treatments exist to help manage RA and a lot of them are targeting the symptoms. These include over the counter pain relievers, steroids and disease modifying antirheumatic drugs or DMARDs. Occupational therapy and lifestyle modifications can be involved and surgeries can as well.
- [15:43]
Holly Fry
DMARDS are part of the treatment for a lot of autoimmune diseases and many of them started out as anti malaria drugs in many cases. It's not fully understood why these can be helpful for autoimmune diseases, but it is likely connected to the way they affect the immune system. One of them, hydroxychloroquine, became sought after in the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic after a paper was published suggesting that it could be helpful for both treatment and post exposure prophylaxis.
- [16:14]
Tracy V. Wilson
Experts raised serious concerns about this paper almost immediately. Among other things, it included only 36 people and eventually that paper was retracted. The FDA issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment and then revoked that authorization just a couple of months later as it became increasingly clear that hydroxychloroquine did not treat or prevent Covid. But by that point President Donald Trump had called it a game changer, which had spiked huge demand for it. Some people, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Continued to promote hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment for years after it was shown not to work for that purpose. Kennedy also spread the baseless conspiracy theory that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were effective against Covid, but that the FDA was barring people's access to them because it was in cahoots with the vaccine industry.
- [17:18]
Holly Fry
This is demonstrably untrue and all of this caused serious problems for people who were using hydroxychloroquine to manage their RA or their lupus, which we're gonna talk about shortly, or other autoimmune diseases. People could not get access to their necessary medication because people who did not need it and were not going to benefit from it were taking it for something it was not effective against. Some people with autoimmune diseases couldn't get access to hydroxychloroquine anymore and had to start taking other medications that were not as effective for them, or weren't effective for them at all, or which had much more pronounced and serious side effects. People can experience flare ups when stopping hydroxychloroquine, even if they're moving to other medications. So these needless shortages demonstrably harmed people.
- [18:10]
Tracy V. Wilson
In terms of when people started experiencing ra, There is more debate about that than about either of the other two diseases we're talking about today. There are three overarching theories. One is that Ra is an ancient disease all around the world, which people have experienced for millennia. Another is that Ra didn't appear until far more recently, sometime in the 18th century, and was triggered by something that was part of the Industrial Revolution, like maybe something involving pollution or industrial chemicals. Something like that. But a third idea is that Ra was an ancient disease in the Americas and then was introduced to Europe through exploration and colonization starting after the 15th century century. The idea here is that there is more older archaeological evidence that's suggestive of rheumatoid arthritis in the Americas than there is in other parts of the world. So maybe there was some kind of disease trigger involved that Europeans did not encounter until that exchange with the Americas. Or maybe Ra is related to tobacco consumption or tobacco smoke smoke. Tobacco is native to the Americas and it was introduced to Europe by Christopher Columbus's expeditions. A counterpoint to that idea is that there's at least some suggestion that Ra was present in Europe prior to Columbus's voyages.
- [19:43]
Holly Fry
Supporters of each of these three hypotheses point to various details to back up their claims. Like Greek physician Hippocrates described a type of arthritis that appeared by the age of 35 and spread quickly from the feet to the hand, then the elbows and knees, then the hips. That sounds more like rheumatoid arthritis than osteoarthritis, which can happen in more than one joint, but typically doesn't affect that many joints in that many parts of the body that quickly. Roman physician Scribonius Larges also described a form of arthritis that mostly affected women. And he did that around 100 BCE. Michael Sellis's Chronographia, written in the 11th century, describes Roman emperor Constantine IX as experienced sensing a disease that affected his feet and then his hands and then his shoulders and then his whole body. Given medical understanding at the time, it's described as humors attacking these parts of his body.
- [20:43]
Tracy V. Wilson
There are also some possible examples of Ra in works of art from before the Industrial Revolution. One example is Rubens, the Three Graces, which was painted in the 1630s. This painting features three nude women, and the one on the far left has her hand on the upper arm of the woman next to her. Her wrist is flexed laterally and her fingers appear to be bent in a way that resembles somebody whose hand has been damaged by ra. This model may be Rubens's wife, Helena Forement, and there are some other portraits of her that have similar depictions of her hands.
- [21:26]
Holly Fry
All of this could be describing or depicting rheumatoid arthritis, but we don't know for sure, since there are diseases and conditions that can cause joint damage. This is also true of joint damage that's suggestive of RA in the archaeological record. RA can leave evidence on the bones, but so can other diseases, including ankylosing spondylitis or AS, which primarily affects the spine. It wasn't until the 20th century that researchers started differentiating between RA and AS, which led to some earlier RA findings in the archaeological record being reinterpreted as, as or as some other condition.
- [22:07]
Tracy V. Wilson
By the 17th century, though, physicians in Europe were starting to differentiate between different types of arthritis and different inflammatory diseases and processes. For example, in 1676, physician Thomas Sydenham published Observationis Medicae, which differentiated between rheumatism and gout. Gout is an inflammatory arthritis that today we know is caused by uric acid buildup in the blood. Gout often affects the big toe, but it can occur in any joint. In the 18th century, William Heberden the Elder also described rheumatism and gout as two different diseases.
- [22:52]
Holly Fry
In 1782, Jon Peterson of Iceland described a chronic arthritis happening on both sides of the body that seemed to be systemic. It was more prevalent in women and the incidence seemed to peak around the age of 40. This sounds a lot like RA, but the person who is usually cited as providing the first clear clinical description of RA is Augustine Jacob Landry Bouvet. In 1800, he was a 28 year old resident physician at the Salpetriere asylum in France. He described a set of patients, most of them poor women, who had severe joint pains not caused by osteoarthritis. He thought this was a type of gout and he called it gut asthenique primitive or primary asthenic gout.
- [23:40]
Tracy V. Wilson
In 1853, French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot wrote a doctoral thesis in which he described arthritis, muscular atrophy and muscular and skeletal malformations. This condition, as he was describing it, seemed to go into remission spontaneously, but then it would recur six years later. English physician Alfred Baron Garrod wrote Treatise on the Nature of Gout and Rheumatic Gout, which again differentiated between gout caused by excess uric acid in the blood and what he called rheumatic gout, which was a different thing. Garrett's son Archibald also became a doctor and coined the term rheumatoid arthritis in his Treatise on Rheumatism and Rheumatoid arthritis arthritis in 1890.
- [24:29]
Holly Fry
Archibald Garrod was one of the people who thought there was archaeological evidence of rheumatoid arthritis going back to the ancient world. But in the 20th century, American physician Charles Short looked back at some of the same reports that Archibald Garaud had used and concluded that they were describing a range of different diseases and conditions and not rheumatoid arthritis. This included ankylosing spondylitis, osteoarthritis and gout. So Short argued that RA was a moderate disease and not an ancient one. As we said earlier, there continues to be debate on this today.
- [25:06]
Tracy V. Wilson
The debate is not about it. Starting in the 1950s and 60s, though all of the debate is centuries earlier than that. We will have one more sponsor break and then we will talk about lupus. The last, last autoimmune disease we're talking about is lupus. The word lupus is part of the name of several diseases today, but when people say lupus, they are usually talking about systemic lupus erythematosis or sle. I have heard people say the word erythematosis and erythematosis, a number of different ways of pronouncing that last word. Regardless, it comes from the Greek word erythros meaning red, and that's a reference to the rashes that are often a part of this disease.
- [26:04]
Holly Fry
This is another inflammatory autoimmune disease with lots of possible symptoms depending on which parts of the body the immune system is attacking. There is also neonatal lupus, which is a rare condition that occurs when a person's antibodies pass to their fetus through the placenta. Drug induced lupus and discoid lupus erythematosis, which affects mostly the skin. The term lupus vulgaris is also used to describe cutaneous tuberculosis.
- [26:33]
Tracy V. Wilson
So we're really focused on SLE here. But the use of the term lupus to describe a lot of different conditions goes way back in history. The first known use of the term lupus in medicine was in reference to a 10th century Catholic bishop named Eracleus. He had an ulcerous condition that mainly affected the area around his buttocks and this was described as lupus because it devoured his tissue the way that a wolf would.
- [27:06]
Holly Fry
The word lupus went on to be used to describe a lot of different rashes, ulcers and even cancers for centuries. By at least the 13th century, this included using the term lupus to describe facial rashes and lesions, specifically on the face. A malar rash or rash shaped like a butterfly across a person's cheeks is associated with SLE today. Although other conditions, including rosacea, can cause similar rashes. And not everyone with SLE has this rash.
- [27:37]
Tracy V. Wilson
It can also look a little different depending on what a person's skin color is. Other typical symptoms of SLE include unexplained fevers, painful or swollen joints and kidney problems. It can also lead to heart failure. And then there can be a range of additional symptoms as well that can really vary from person to person, including hair loss, chest pain, and pale or purple fingers and toes. When somebody gets cold or is under a lot of stress, this is known as Raynaud's phenomenon. As with Crohn's disease and ra, SL can cause recurring periods of illness and relative health or flares and remission. Treatments include non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids and DMARDs. And there are also various treatments that are focused on minimizing the skin irritation and rashes.
- [28:31]
Holly Fry
Of course, the broad use of the word lupus to describe things other than SLE complicates the conversation about exactly when SLE was first described. But beyond that, like the other diseases we've talked about today, SLE shares symptoms with other diseases and conditions. It wasn't until the 19th century that descriptions and definitions started to become more precise.
- [28:55]
Tracy V. Wilson
So in the 18 teens, Robert Willin and his mentee Thomas Bateman wrote a book called Delineations of Cutaneous Diseases. Willin died in 1812 and Bateman finished the book and published it in 1817. This book laid out a systemic way to categorize different skin diseases along with engravings and illustrating those diseases under tuberculous diseases, meaning diseases that cause tubercules, not necessarily tuberculosis specifically. They used the term lupus to describe rashes and lesions affecting specifically the face.
- [29:40]
Holly Fry
Over the course of the 19th century, doctors started drawing distinctions between types of lupus, with some conditions primarily affecting the skin and others also involving other organs the way SLE does. The first detailed modern description of SLE is usually cited as coming from French dermatologist Pierre Cazenev. In 1833, Cazanev had a 60 year career as a doctor, and during that time, he also differentiated between discoid lupus and systemic lupus. And in 1847, he described the differences between lupus vulgaris caused by tuberculosis and what he called lupus arithmeto.
- [30:23]
Tracy V. Wilson
Two years later, Viennese physician Ferdinand von Hebra described the butterfly like rash that's seen as often characteristic of SLE today. Then in 1868, physician and surgeon Alexander John Balmano Squire used the term vespertilio or bat like, to describe this same rash.
- [30:44]
Holly Fry
In 1872, Hungarian dermatologist Moritz Kaposy continued to refine definitions for lupus, including drawing a distinction between discoid lupus, primarily affecting the skin, and disseminated lupus, which was a systemic lupus that could sometimes be fatal. He described the other potential symptoms of this sometimes fatal systemic lupus as including swollen lymph nodes, joint pain, pain in the long bones, fever and weight loss.
- [31:15]
Tracy V. Wilson
In 1879, Emile Vidal, who worked at Hpital St. Louis in Paris, further distinguished lupus erythematosus from lupus vulgaris caused by tuberculosis. Later, Robert Koch's discovery of the tuberculosis bacillus in 1882 helped doctors conclusively diagnose lupus vulgaris as caused by TB. At that point, it quickly became clear that lupus vulgaris was far more common than lupus erythematosis.
- [31:47]
Holly Fry
In 1894, J. Payne delivered a postgraduate lecture in which he reported that quinine could be useful in the treatment of lupus, likely the earliest use of an antimalarial drug in the treatment of an autoimmune disease.
- [32:02]
Tracy V. Wilson
From this point, doctors continued to develop new methods for diagnosing SLE and for trying to treat it and manage its symptoms. Then, in 1948, Malcolm McCallum Hargraves discovered what came to be known as the lupus erythematosus cell or LE cell. It is also sometimes called the Hargraves cell. This is a cellular indication of an autoimmune process going on inside the body. This discovery apparently came about by happenstance. There was a hematologist at the Mayo Clinic who was drawing the blood from patients and treating it with an anticoagul just walking over to the lab a few blocks away. This window of time to walk for the lab allowed the process that made these cells visible to take place. And without that little time window, it probably would not have been noticed. Le cells are specific types of white blood cells that have been engulfed by the denatured nuclear material from other cells. And the presence of these cells can be indicative of SLE as well as of other autoimmune diseases.
- [33:15]
Holly Fry
As with RA and Crohn's disease, it does seem like lupus rates are increasing, but as with those, this is a global trend, not just in the U.S. although there is a lot of regional and demographic variation in how prevalent it is. But again, none of these diseases are post 20th century developments.
- [33:36]
Tracy V. Wilson
Gammon I'm sorry. Not sure how you got to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services having not heard of juvenile mild diabetes, but that's where we are.
- [33:45]
Holly Fry
Well, it's like it's that thing that I've never heard of it so it doesn't exist thing. It's just wild to me. There's so many things I've never heard of.
- [33:55]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, but they are real. A lot of people never heard of spasmodic dysphonia until RFK Jr became a public figure.
- [34:07]
Holly Fry
Yep.
- [34:08]
Tracy V. Wilson
While experiencing it.
- [34:10]
Holly Fry
Yep.
- [34:11]
Tracy V. Wilson
Anyway, I have some listener mail before we you know, we're gonna go on from this to record our Friday behind the scenes. I'm sure we'll have plenty more things to say. This is from Kristen. The subject line of this email is Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin in horrible Handwriting. Kristen wrote. Hi Holly and Tracy. When I listened to your Saturday Classic episode on Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin, I heard you mention your difficulty with handwriting and your music that maybe you should have been taught to write with your left hand. My son also has tremendous difficulty with handwriting and his schoolwork was greatly affected. He was failing everything. In sixth grade. We requested that the school test him for specific learning disabilities as a last resort because we were at our wit's end as most of his trouble was in literature. I suspected he had dyslexia. It turns out there is another SLD related to dyslexia called dysgraphia that is characterized by difficulty with handwriting. I often describe it to people unfamiliar with this condition that if dyslexia is trouble getting written information into the brain, dysgraphia is trouble getting written information out of the brain. Of course, it's a lot more nuanced than that simple explanation. Since his diagnosis and subsequent IEP to allow him to give typed or oral answers and other support, he has completely turned his education around in 10th grade. Now he is an honors student taking two AP math courses. Honors Wind Ensemble. He plays tenor sax in the jazz band. Also, he says he wants to study science communication in college. Just wanted to bring awareness to this SLD because not many people even know it exists. I sure hadn't heard of it until my son's diagnosis. Thank you for being a bright spot in these gloomy times and making me laugh four times a week. Kristen. Kristen has also included some pet tags. There is a 13 year old golden retriever mix named Hawk. There's a lab mix named Midnight, newly adopted little sister to Hoss. Trip is the tripod. Ginger rescued from the side of the road is a kitten who thinks he is a Hoss. And then Rascal is a blue smoked tabby found in an abandoned shed. And then Stella, born to a feral managed barn colony but brought into the house for health reasons as a small kitten. Stella is a Torti so is obviously in charge. Oh my goodness.
- [36:43]
Holly Fry
I think I got the one torti that has no in chargeness.
- [36:46]
Tracy V. Wilson
Yeah, well she just has none. The Tortie I used to have. Sestina was also never in charge.
- [36:54]
Holly Fry
Yeah, she was not a sassy cat.
- [36:55]
Tracy V. Wilson
She was not sassy. She desperately wanted to play with Villanelle when I got them both and Villanelle did not want this at all. And she couldn't seem to retain that Villanelle was never going to want to play with her, which was sad. They eventually learned to tolerate each other well enough. Thank you so much for these pet pictures. My goodness, so cute. All of them. So cute. Thanks also for this email. I had heard of dysgraphia also Dyscalcula. I think we have gotten some emails about before dyscalculia involving struggles with mathematics. Some of these things are sort of. They can be connected to other things that are also going on. And sometimes they are. It's like this is the thing that the person is sort of experiencing. I have like family members who have struggles with different things that all relate to like the same motor planning issue in their mind that sort of evidences itself in multiple ways. And then I also dyslexia in particular runs broadly in my family. Would I have been diagnosed with dysgraphia as a child? Who can say? Yeah. So thank you so much Kristin for this email and the pictures. If you would like like to send us a note, we're at history podcastheartradio.com and you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you get your podcast. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show shows.
- [38:58]
C
I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast Betrayal Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone most of all, his wife Caroline.
- [39:08]
Tracy V. Wilson
He texted, I've ruined our lives. You're going to want to divorce me.
- [39:14]
C
How far would he go to cover up what he'd done?
- [39:17]
Holly Fry
The fact that you lied is absolutely horrific. And quite frankly, I question how many other women are out there that may bring forward allegations in the future.
- [39:25]
C
Listen to betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [39:34]
D
Amy Robach and T.J. holmes here, Diddy's former protege, television personality Danity King. Alum Aubrey O' Day joins us to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation.
- [39:47]
C
It wasn't all bad, but I don't know that any of the good was real. I went through things there.
- [39:55]
D
Listen to Amy and TJ presents Aubrey O' Day covering the Diddy trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:05]
E
Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Fry and Maria Tremarke, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the Highwayman suggests men dominated the field, but tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrers, Known as the wicked lady who terrorized England in the mid-1600s, her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:41]
F
A crime makes headlines, people talk about it for a few days, then it disappears.
- [40:46]
Tracy V. Wilson
But for the people left behind, their story is just beginning.
- [40:50]
Holly Fry
But at night, we hear the garage opening and my son hears it, we freak out. Honestly, I didn't tell my son this, but I felt that was it.
- [40:58]
F
From the exactly right network. This is the Knife. Real stories of crime's ripple effects told by those who live them.
- [41:05]
Tracy V. Wilson
New episodes every Thursday.
- [41:07]
F
Listen to the knife on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:14]
Tracy V. Wilson
You're listening to an iHeart podcast.